Food Truck Talk - Searching for the best foodtrucks!http://www.foodtrucktalk.com
FoodTrucktalk.com in search of the best food trucksThu, 08 Jan 2015 19:16:08 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Barcelona On The Go – Orange County, CA (@BrcelonaOntheGo)http://www.foodtrucktalk.com/barcelona-on-the-go-orange-county-ca-brcelonaonthego
http://www.foodtrucktalk.com/barcelona-on-the-go-orange-county-ca-brcelonaonthego#commentsFri, 19 Dec 2014 00:10:33 +0000http://www.foodtrucktalk.com/?p=3387Congratulations to Barcelona On The Go as FoodTruckTalk.com’s Food Truck Of-The-Week!

At times it seems like all the great food trucks in Orange County, California are overshadowed by the sheer number of great trucks in Los Angeles. Orange County has it’s own health regulations and requires separate permits from Los Angeles County, as a result the assortment of trucks roaming Orange County is very different from the LA scene.

Barcelona On The Go specializes in Spanish bistro cuisine, including tapas. We recently ran across the Barcelona On the Go food truck in Irvine, CA and ordered up the lead item on the menu board: Churrasco con Chimichurri! For those of you that don’t speak Spanish that means “Premium-Angus Top Sirloin with Chimichurri Sauce”, and it is served over fresh and crisp french fries. We were blown away by this dish, with all of us agreeing that if we were served this item in a fine-dining restaurant we would not be suprised. The Angus beef was cooked to perfection, and was juicy tender. The fries were outstanding. But what really impressed us was the freshness and full flavor of the Chimichurri sauce. Outstanding! We recommend bottling the sauce and selling it, it was that good.

The rest of the Barcelona On The Go menu all use fresh ingredients and are prepared to perfection. Other patrons stopped by in search of Barcelona’s Paella Valencia na (seafood & chicken paella). While this dish is not available every day those that have had it raved about it, and considered it one of the best food truck items that they have every had.

Spanish sandwiches are popular and include the Bocadillo de Pollo con Salsa Romesco (chicken breast with romesco sauce), Bocadillo de Serrano (Serrano ham sandwich) and the Catalan sausage sandwich.

Also available is a great Lentil Soup (with smoked ham), egg/potato frittatas, chicken turnovers and Manchego cheese croquettes.

There is no question you will not only enjoy the food at Barcelona On The Go but also appreciate the freshness of the ingredients and the care used in the preperation of true Spanish cuisine.

For those of you in the Los Angeles area (and beyond) it is worth the drive south for a visit to Barcelona On The Go!

]]>http://www.foodtrucktalk.com/barcelona-on-the-go-orange-county-ca-brcelonaonthego/feed0Frites ‘N’ Meats – New York City, NY (@fritesnmeats)http://www.foodtrucktalk.com/frites-n-meats-new-york-city-ny-fritesnmeats
http://www.foodtrucktalk.com/frites-n-meats-new-york-city-ny-fritesnmeats#commentsMon, 15 Dec 2014 17:40:37 +0000http://foodtrucktalk.com/?p=724It’s an overcast, cool, rainy day today…. perfect for some comfort food. That makes it perfect for a great burger and incredible fries. New York’s Frites “n” Meats delivers in both areas.

First off they start their burgers with a choice of two quality types of meat. Either grass fed angus, or wagyu american kobe. Combine that with quality bread products like a brioche, potato-onion or sesame seed bun and you are starting off just fine! With base quality ingredients like this most would expect to pay $15 for a burger, at Frites “N” Meats the grass fed angus burger is $5.50 and just $2.00 more for the american kobe.

When it comes to cheese the choices are also top of the line. Gruyere, goat, brie, cheddar and blue cheese are all available. Class up your burger with additional toppings like onion, tomato, mesclun greens, onion jam, guacamole, bacon and oven roasted tomato.

Generally the Frites ‘N’ Meats burgers are cooked medium-rare to compensate for the time it takes to get the burger back to your desk or home. The burgers are wrapped in insulated material so your burger will actually continue to cook while it’s transported. But Frites ‘N’ Meats is happy to cook your burger your way. (Hmmm, is there a jingle in there somewhere?).

Once you have created your perfect burger, you must have perfect fries or frites. The fries at Frites “N” Meats are belgian-style, this means that the fries go through the Belgium double-frying process that ensures that your fries will have the perfect golden color, fabulous crispness on the outside and wonderful potato creaminess on the inside. Perfection. If you must… ketchup, mayo, mustard, and a variety of aioli’s are available.

The Frites ‘N’ Meats menu is supplemented by several tasty soups (also perfect for a cold and gloomy day) and Lena’s homemade dessert treats (pefect for any day).

Every time I go to San Francisco I treat myself to the famous ice cream sandwiches called It’s-It. They are made by sandwiching vanilla (usually) ice cream between two oatmeal cookies and then dipping them in dark chocolate. In the 70’s they could only be found in mom and pop stores. Now their distribution area is larger, but I find I only have the craving when I am in San Francisco.

It’s-It started me out on a path to find the very best ice cream sandwiches. I still like It’s-It, even if they are mass produced. But I have a new all-time favorite, it’s the ice cream sandwiches from the Coolhaus food truck.

Greetings, gentle readers. The more astute among you may have noticed that the amount of time since my last post has been right around a year. I’ve posted in the past the reason for the long gaps and what was true then remains true now: I just don’t have the luxury of the time required to write this blog on a consistent basis. So what brings me (temporarily) out of retirement today? A troubling tale I am prepared to tell, involving a food truck, squishy Italian hoagie rolls, and a blatant disregard for the safety of customers.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about food trucks on this blog. Some of them, including The Orange Truk, Wholly Frijoles, Zydeco Bistro, and Boca Loca Burrito Factory have set out and accomplished the main goal of a food truck: to be unique and serve quality, freshly prepared food to the people for a reasonable price. The best food trucks seek to recreate the same food experience one would find at a great restaurant (at least in terms of the food). Of course, I suppose you can’t have the best without having the worst. While I want every restaurant (and food truck) to succeed, real world studies indicate that nearly 60% of restaurants will fail over a three year period. Today’s visit to the Nacho Mama Food Truck out of Kent, Ohio proved exactly why this is the case.

Being a lovely sunny day in the low 70’s was too much of an allure to stay indoors. Coupled with the announcement I saw by one of the many food trucks I follow on Facebook, I discovered that there would be a “round up” of seven trucks at the Home Depot in Cuyahoga Falls. When I got to the round up around noon, I was relieved to find that the lines were fairly short. After getting my camera equipment set up in the back of my car, I walked around to survey the goods. While I enjoyed the crepe I had at Premier Crepes at a past round up, I wasn’t really in a crepe kind of mood today. Surveying my other options, I finally settled on Nacho Mama Food Truck. I had seen it at other round ups, but had yet to try their food. Today was as good as any to give it the college try.

I approached the truck and began to read the menu. The first red flag was that the chorizo dog they were offering was misspelled as a “chirizo” dog. Thinking the misspelling might have been done on purpose as a marketing gimmick, I asked the woman taking orders if that was indeed the case. When she stared back at me blankly, my question was answered without her having to actually say anything. Other menu items for today were nachos (as the name of the truck would imply), burritos, and a few other things aimed at children. My philosophy when trying out a new restaurant (or truck) is generally to buy two or three items, photograph them all, eat one and take the other(s) home for later consumption.

After ordering my chorizo dog topped with the spicy slaw, I set about attempting to order the tequila lime chicken nachos. This was where things started to get a little dicey. While people like to claim that they want choice in their lives, when faced with too much choice, the average human being becomes paralyzed with fear over having to actually make said choice. And with some fifteen toppings from which to choose, it took me a minute to get my bearings. Nacho Mama might be better served by offering a “standard” – beans, lettuce, tomatoes, shredded cheese, and salsa – and then allow customers to modify it to suit their taste. For whatever reason I was feeling in a nacho cheese kind of mood, so I added it as one of the toppings.

After paying the $15 for my haul (I included one of the Pepsi products as well), I walked to the other end of the truck to wait for my food. Within a minute or so, the woman inside the truck handed me the chorizo dog. While waiting for my nachos, she helpfully informed me that the chorizo link was actually from a place with which I am quite familiar, Dumas Meats in Mogadore, Ohio. That, to me, was a good sign. The bad sign, sadly, was the white squishy Italian hoagie bun on which the dog had been served. More on that later.

The last step before handing me my finished nachos was the ladling on of the cheese. Sadly, this happened straight from a very large can that had no cover on it that was labeled, “Nacho Cheese.” One might find this type of product at any Gordon Food Service (GFS) / Sam’s Club / food wholesale place and would have probably been more correctly labeled “pasteurized cheese food product” rather than just “cheese.” Regardless, after the ladling of the cheese, she handed it to me. The first thing I noticed besides the dayglo orange color of the cheese was the heft of the basket in my hand. For $7, you certainly got your money’s worth, I thought.

As I crossed the parking lot to my waiting car, I began to notice a problem. The nacho cheese had been poured too closely to one of the edges of the cardboard container and as it settled, had started to ooze over the edge. Not wanting to set this down anywhere in or on my car, I did the only thing a person holding a soda pop and chorizo dog in one hand and a container of nachos in the other hand could do: I decided to lick the cheese off the cardboard. I figured I just wouldn’t photograph that side of the dish. I put the cardboard container to my mouth and gently licked the offending cheese off with a quick swipe of my tongue and gasped in amazement: the nacho cheese was ROOM temperature!

Now, those of you reading with no commercial food preparation or restaurant experience may think my negative reaction was due to the fact that I (and probably you) prefer your nacho cheese food product served hot. Tepid liquid cheese is just not something I relish the thought of eating. In reality, my surprise was due to the fact that by not holding the cheese at a proper serving temperature, the Nacho Mama Food Truck folks were playing Russian roulette with their customer’s health.

Most food safety guidelines indicate that to avoid bacterial growth, food must be held below 40 degrees or above 135 (some say 140) degrees Fahrenheit. As for time spent in between those two extremes, the cumulative time must be calculated and the food must be discarded after it reaches four hours. In addition to the inappropriate holding temperature, the can of cheese was just sitting on the counter, completely uncovered. Who was to say that something couldn’t fly in through a window and contaminate the product

So, let me see if I’ve got my math straight. The food trucks started serving food at 11 am and I was there at noon. Best case scenario, let’s assume that the staff opened a fresh can of nacho cheese sauce right at 11 am. So, an uncovered can has already sat there for an hour right in the middle of the temperature danger zone? You can see why I was so alarmed. And honestly, if they can’t hold this food at the proper temperature, what makes me think they know how to hold any other food at the proper temperature to avoid potentially getting people sick.

After photographing both items, I turned my attention to the chorizo dog. Upon my first bite, I was rewarded with a nice snap from the dog and creamy cole slaw. Unfortunately, the spicy part of the “spicy slaw” I ordered to top the dog was nowhere to be found. This was straight up cole slaw, and I’d venture to say given the provenance of the other ingredients coming out of the truck, it was probably food service cole slaw. But for me, the bigger issue with the dog was the bun

The large Italian-style hoagie bun was straight out of squishy white bread hell and couldn’t contain the dog and the slaw. Within another couple of bites, the dog had broken through the spine and by the time I got halfway done with it, the bun had completely split along the spine, offering no additional structural support to keep everything together. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to grab a plastic fork from the truck and while I had originally envisioned using it with the nachos, found a more appropriate use for it to clean up the mounds of slaw that had fallen into the waiting basket below. The only real positive for me about this dog was the chorizo link itself from Dumas Meats.

I ended up disposing of the nachos in the garbage can, not even wanting to eat a single bite. I packed my camera gear away, got back in my car, and drove off. I do not plan on eating at the Nacho Mama Food Truck again, really for two reasons. First, the food safety issue (and that is the elephant in the room). Second, the quality and uniqueness of the food just didn’t appeal to my sense of adventure. It felt like really bad Americanized versions of Mexican staples and honestly, there are plenty of other places I can already go to for that. You can definitely cross this food truck off of my list of places I’d recommend.

Some food trucks don’t more, they stay in one spot and kick-out some huge (most would say “big ass”) sandwiches. At SW 3rd and Ash Street in Portland is such an establishment.

A husband and wife team are serving a small menu with big sandwiches such as the PORK HAMMER featuring ham, bacon, sausage, home-cut fries and home-made coleslaw. That’s the priciest sandwich on the menu at just $9. It’s a meal!

The namesake “Big Ass Sandwich” gives you a choice of slow-roasted turkey, beef or ham, piled high with home-cut french fries, covered with Bechamel cheese sauce and served onto a ciabatta roll. Spend an extra fifty cents and add some pickled jalapenos!

Big-Ass Sandwiches uses local ingredients whenever possible including their break (baked daily and locally), as well as meats from Northwest family owned stock yards and locally made sauces.

Part of what makes Big-Ass sandwiches so huge is that most sandwiches include french fries on the sandwich. Adds to the taste and the convenience!

Portland has a large vegetarian commuity and Big-Ass Sandwiches serves their needs with veggie fare.

Kamala is one of the owners of one of Seattle’s most popular food trucks – Marination Mobile She is originally from Hawaii, and has a little bit of Korean in her as well.

Her partner is Roz. She is Chinese and Filipina by blood, born in Greece, and raised by a Japanese mom. She lived in Romania for a while as well.

Together Kamala and Roz dish out some amazing dishes inspired primarily by the flavors of Hawaii and Korea. They obviously share a lot of ethnic knowledge about most of the world so they are experts in creating great international flavor. As Kamala says about Marination, “it’s the melting of Korean heat and aloha love together in a corn tortilla.”

It’s clear Marination’s marinades are top notch. The tacos are stuffed with either pork, ginger-miso chicken, tofu or kalbi and topped with a saucy, tangy slaw. Kalbi is a traditional Korean dish; tender short ribs marinaded in soy, garlic and citrus. It’s salty and sweet! The pork is sliced super thin and marinaded in a rich red pepper sauce.

In addition to the tacos Marination Mobile food truck also has sliders filled with pork or SPAM, which is the unofficial national food of Hawaii. The Kimchi Rice Bowl can be ordered with any of meats (or tofu) and topped with a sunny side up fried egg!

Finally, there is the SPAM Musubi, apparently a staple of surfers, it’s a grilled slice of SPAMwith a ball of rice, wrapped in a seaweed blanket. Hmmm, gotta give that a try.

Marination Mobile has won a plethora of awards and recognitions, they are certainly serving Seattle with creative and flavorful Hawaiin-Korean food.

The menu is simple, but the flavors are strong. ZZAAM features Korean tacos, Big Bowls (rice, vegetables plus meat), Lettuce Wraps, Sliders and Salad Bowls. For the protein choose from chicken, beef (Bul-Gogi) spicy pork or tofu. All are free-range and hormone free.

A ZZAAM brick and mortar location will be opening soon in Charlottesville, VA

The menu features not only a traditional sloppy joe sandwich, but some creative alternatives including the “It’s All Greek To Joe” with lamb joe seasoned with traditional Greek flavors and topped with Feta, fresh cucumber and pickled onions.

The “Mi So Joe” is a veggie Joe, gull of tofu, eggplant and button mushrooms topped with a spicy carrot pineapple slaw.

The “Joey Melt” is a best seller, with traditional sloppy joe with honey caramelized onions, and classic American Cheese.